ABSTRACT
The clergy sat at the heart of medieval society, yet at the same time considered itself to be partly detached from it. Its self-image encompassed a life dedicated to prayer, the liturgy and pastoral care. Saints – who led exemplary religious lives and worked miracles both in this and the next world – served as an example to the clergy, although the saintly ideal evolved over time. The zealous missionaries who brought Christianity to the Low Countries furnished the first generation of saints. Their life narratives mostly centred on preaching, on occasion crowned with a martyr’s death. However, saints also became involved in the practical organization of education, the dissemination of religious knowledge and pastoral care. According to their biographers, bishops who were canonized after the missionary era combined an ascetic way of life with political and administrative stature. Others were canonized in reward for their rejection of this world, and for working miracles.
The head of the episcopacy put pressure on the lowest echelons of village pastors to live up to prevailing Church norms, meet their liturgical duties, keep their distance from the parishioners and ensure they led Christian lives. An eleventh-century penitential advised the priesthood to employ confession as an instrument to gauge the confessors’ conscience. They should also see to it that the laity abjured sorcery, the foretelling of the future and all kinds of sexual transgressions. However, regulations issued by early ninth-century Liège bishops reveal that priests certainly did not always abide by these norms.
